"Whirl-Mart Ritual Resistance is a participatory experiment. It is art and action. It came into being in 2001 as a response to Adbusters magazine’s call for foolish action on the first of April. What began as a single happening in Troy, NY has over the course of a year evolved into a ritual activity that is performed across the U.S., and known around the world.
"Two weekends ago, a loose network of these artists and activists, under the name Subvertisers International, launched their first global effort to reclaim our shared public environment from its monopolization by commercial media. The demand was not for better or more truthful advertising, but to imagine what a city would look like when the stories we told ourselves in public space reflected a democratic voice.
Since the beginning of Bulgaria's transition to democracy, the monument’s meaning and future has been the subject of heated debates. Opponents to the monument aren’t happy about the presence of such a dominating foreign army monument in the country that is situated higher and more central than national symbols. In recent years, the monument has turned into a canvas for anonymous political statements on multiple occasions.
Danish 26-year-old art student Nadia Plesner designed this T-shirt depicting a Darfurian child holding a Louis Vuitton handbag as commentary on global disparity as it relates to war, developing nations, commercialism, and media.
In 2006, the fashion house sued Plesner for her appropriation of their trademark. The case was subsequently dismissed.
“Piano Stairs” is an interactive playful musical stairway installation created into the Odenplan underground station of Stockholm to make people use stairs more often than elevator. The project was part of a Wolkswagen initiative called “The fun theory” whose main objective and mission is to “change people’s behaviour for the better by making it fun to do.”
Barbie Hoax Targets Mattel and Fools Some News Outlets
The false campaign by environmental activists claimed that the toy giant was launching a new line of decomposable Barbies and would stop using plastic by 2030.
Vetements' trademark is for subverting the fashion industry’s ways of doing things. Following its recent return to the runway after a short one season break, designer Demna Gvasalia has unveiled his latest project.
As a visual art student, I’m interested in hearing your feedback about this project. Thanks
We need to make a call to awaken humanity from their passivity and social indifference and acceptance of criminals who did commit crimes against humanity. When a human suffers we also suffer. Is only one Humankind I’m not from a different species.
In this mobile game, the studio Molleindustria makes commentary on the people and practices behind the creation of mobile devices. Not lost on the authors is the deep sense of irony in that the game itself relies on mobile platform. The "game" is structured as a narrative where the process begins in mining materials in Africa (slavery) to putting together the devices in China (labor abuse), to heavy purchasing in the U.S.
Whether or not they follow politics, it’s fair to assume most people don’t actually read electoral programs. Podemos, Spain’s growing leftwing party, which got nearly 21% of the votes in last year’s elections, doesn’t think that’s good, so it adopted an unusual marketing approach to tackle that problem: it printed the program as an Ikea catalogue (pdf, link in Spanish).
An Egyptian-born activist was arrested yesterday for spray-painting subway billboards that call enemies of Israel “savages” — amid a wave of vandalism unleashed on the inflammatory ads, which have divided the city.
Mona Eltahawy, a self-described “liberal Muslim,” strolled up to one of the signs at the crowded 1/2/3 train mezzanine at the Times Square station and sprayed pink paint on the ads.
"FTSE" is Birmingham-born producer and rapper Sam Manville. As an anti-captialist, he though it would be funny to take the name of the British stock market index (Financial Times and Stock Exchange), but he also jokes the acronym stands for "Fuck The System, Ennit.”
Internet spreads word as networks shun adverts for Buy Nothing Day
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
The Guardian, Friday 24 November 2000
Today is America's Buy Nothing Day. An event that was started to poke pointed fun at consumerism is now being celebrated in more than 40 countries, embarrassing television networks and demonstrating the power of the internet as a political organising tool.
Taken from the website:
Dyke Action Machine! (DAM!) is a two-person public art project founded in 1991 by artist Carrie Moyer and photographer Sue Schaffner. Between 1991 and 2004 DAM! blitzed the streets of New York City with public art projects that combined Madison Avenue savvy with Situationist tactics.
This is a project about bushmeat: the hunting of wild meat in the forests of sub-Saharan Africa, for our purposes specifically the Democratic Republic of Congo. This bushmeat food-cart serves up information and interpretations of the
Is it better for the environment if you buy a brand-new cotton T-shirt or a recycled one?
Well, it depends.
Recycling has apparent benefits, but the process shortens cotton fibres and so usually has to be mixed with some oil-based material to keep it from falling apart.
Such trade-offs make it tricky to figure out the real sustainability rating of clothes — but brands in Europe will soon have no choice.
What is looping? Somewhere in between art, activism, and wackiness is this liberating experience. Matthew Silver and Fritz Donnelley, two New York City based performance artists got lonely acting silly in their underwear in public. Knowing that there were enough free spirits to join them, they started "Looping" and invited everyone to join them.
Michael Landy made an inventory of every single thing he owned: every item of furniture, every book, every work of art, every article of clothing and one Saab car. Cataloguing all his possessions took a year to complete and the final list comprised 7,227 items.
"After the murder of George Floyd last year, cities all over the nation vowed to rethink their approach to public safety, including our hometown of Burlington, VT. We took a hard look at what's changed — and what hasn't."
Song Dong's Waste Not consisted of a single installation comprising over 10,000 commonplace, domestic items of daily life that had been used and amassed by the artist’s mother (Zhao Xiangyuan) over fifty years.
Stickers imitating the Land O Lakes Butter packaging are being placed in grocery stores over the original packaging. The packaging has been altered to say "Land O Rape - Culture" by street artist Recycled Propaganda.
Happy Hippie Foundation was created by American singer Miley Cyrus in 2014. The organization based out of Los Angeles is an initiative geared toward ending abuse, intolerance, and discrimination facing LGBTQ youth - often leading to homelessness. By using her visual and vocal artistry to raise awareness concerning homelessness and AIDS prevention, Cyrus is able to set an example and create lasting influence.
Artist Michael Landy catalogued, inventoried, and systemically destroyed all of his possessions for the 2001 public installation Break Down, commissioned by British arts organization Artangel. It took him three years just to itemize the 7,227 objects included in the project.
For those of you unfamiliar with the wonderful Worth1000, it’s a website that hosts creative contests of all kinds, most notably for photoshoppers who are outstanding at what they do. Hell, just look at the first question on the site’s FAQ list and you’ll have a basic idea of how good some of these people are at making terrific photoshops.